Today, we are exploring the topic of Body, Mind, and Spirit (Finding Your Purpose) with Don Barden.

I sat down with my good friend, Dr. Don Barden, a man whose life blends the intellectual and the practical in a truly unique way. Don holds a PhD and a doctorate in seminary, has worked on Wall Street with multi-million-dollar deals, and has authored books like The Perfect Plan and Here Come the Girls. He’s also an Army Ranger—a person you’d definitely want by your side when the zombie apocalypse comes. Above all, Don embodies the integration of body, mind, and spirit in a way that very few people do.

In this conversation, we discussed the concept of the "morality play" and how love is at the core of both personal growth and leadership. We also explore a fresh take on spirituality, drawing from diverse religious traditions not as absolutes but as moral guideposts—tools for living a purposeful life. Don unpacks spiritual stories, like those from the Bible, and makes them relatable, understandable, and fun. His approach to spirituality is not about dogma but about deepening personal understanding through exploration, questioning, and critical reflection.

Topics We Explore:

• Love as a universal truth: live without judgment and respect all traditions
• Firsthand Exploration Matters: Read and reflect on texts yourself to deepen understanding—don’t rely on secondhand interpretations.
• Interpret the morality play through personal questioning and understanding
• Embody the body, mind, and spirit of a warrior to achieve wholeness
• Understand your purpose and connection with others by exploring together
• Recognize the present as the only truth and overcome the victim mentality to grow

Connect with Don Barden: https://donbarden.com/ 

Learn More about The Viking Academy: https://www.vikingacademy.com/scouting-party

Episode Transcript:

Erik Solbakken: Hi, everyone, and welcome back to the Viking Academy Podcast. This episode was absolutely epic for me to record. I have my friend, good friend, Dr. Don Barden. Don has a PhD, he's a professor, he has got a doctorate in seminary, he has been worked on Wall Street with multi-million dollar deals. He has a book called The Perfect Plan and Here Come the Girls. He's a very intellectual person, deep thinker, but he's also an Army Ranger. So in other words, when the zombie apocalypse comes, you want him on your side. He encompasses the three aspects of the mind, body, and spirit more than anybody I know. He's a really dear friend of mine. But the thing that really gets incredible in this podcast is him and I explore a revamping of the way we look at spirituality, is taking the spiritual texts from all different religions and looking at it through the lens of teachings and moral compasses, moral guideposts, shall we say, instead of absolutes from a damning God or a damning spirit. And he goes into deep detail on a couple of basic stories about Jesus and in the Bible, and he unpacks it and makes it totally relatable and understandable in a way that's entertaining, fun, and makes you wanna pick up your Viking sword and go explore like an absolute savage. He is a beast, he's an entertainer, he's one of my best friends. I'm so looking forward to you being able to listen to this podcast. So without further ado, let's go explore Hey, Don, welcome to the podcast.

Don Barden: Hey, Eric. Thanks for having me, man. I love what you're doing. This Viking Academy thing is, it's be- beyond galactic, so, congratulations on this. This is fun.

Erik Solbakken: Oh, thanks, man. We, we've been talking about this for a while now because you and I've been working together in, in a number of businesses. We've tried to work together and do some collaborations and, we met through another business coaching program and, and I've seen your business grow. And so you and I have been talking about this. You've seen it bubble up from the ground up and where it started to percolate and grow, and then I finally said to you the one day, I went, "I, I'm gonna launch this." And you're like, "Yeah, go for it."

Don Barden: Yeah. Yeah. Congratulations. We're here. This is great, man.

Erik Solbakken: Thank you for that. And what I wanted to do on this podcast is I wanna, I wanna dive into some areas that you and I have never really talked about. Now, you're, you're someone with a very interesting, colorful background with all sorts of layers, and I wanna introduce you to my listeners, as someone who is really, I believe, encompassed the Viking spirit and, and embraced the three areas of the mind, the body, and the spirit in all different levels. Like- I'm not even really sure where to start on this one here, but maybe you can just give everybody a little bit of a background on just your kind of chronological history of, of where you started in with the Rangers and business and can we just start with that?

Don Barden: , my life's a little bit of Jason Bourne meets, Forrest Gump, but I always joke with people more. In more cases than, than none, it's more on the Forrest Gump side. So, it's just a, a, a hodgepodge of bumbling through life and always believing that there's a, there's a better tomorrow. I've just believed that since I was a little kid. so to give you a background, of it, a PhD in economics and organizational leadership. my, my specialty, is, is behavioral economics, particularly around women in leadership, so my new study is coming out, is around that. But, that's a reflection of what's curious now in exploration, and I believe that that needed to be explored, and that's always been inside of me, is to explore, which I think is very Viking of me. that it's about going out and seeking new areas to, to be curious about, to talk about, not just for the sake of being curious, but for the impact that that can make, and not being afraid to ask questions. So since I was a little kid, I'd be the. I'd be probably the one that irritated people, and I was a terrible student when I was little, to the point that my first university told me to rethink my career decisions like three times. They told me, "I need to just. It's not for you."? And, so I got to go explore some of the world and, realize how. And, and I use this word, purposely. But when I was young and I got to go around the world for the first time and explore it, I realized how insignificant we are, as individuals. So, there's eight billion people on the planet that are constantly dying and constantly having more children, and we as a species are, are growing. And when you got eight billion people all over the world with different beliefs and loves and, and, and there is a commonality. There's no doubt we have a commonality amongst us as humans. But at the end of the day, we realize that we're really insignificant. So if one person out of eight billion is no longer with us- Eh, sorry. But, it's hard on the people who loved you. but at the end of the day, it's just the cycle of life, right? So when I realized that, I got to be very introspective and say to myself, "Okay, this is gonna be a great ride,"? "How can I make the most of it?" Even though everything in my upbringing told me not to do that, and, and told me to, this is your lot in life. you just get a job, get a good pension one day. work and do this. And it is a labor camp. Just go out there and produce and be laborious, and then see what happens. And when I got to travel around the world, I sat back and said, "I really think there's, there's more to this." And, it just gave myself permission is what it did, to ask questions, to explore, believe that there's a better tomorrow. And fr- frankly, I had to learn how to learn, 'cause I didn't know. And but once I did, man, it took off. And, I have had a great life, around that. So wh- where do you wanna begin? I'll, I'll tell you anything. This is an all-access tour here.

Erik Solbakken: Yeah, this is, and is. You can tell I, I have an understanding of where I wanna go with this, but I'm also gonna be pleasantly surprised in some corners we get into because- Right there's some areas that you and I have never talked about. So just for the listener to understand, Dr. Barton has got, You also have a doctorate in seminary?

Don Barden: , yeah, I went, and, the university I did it is a seminary-based school, so everything was faith-based and the core class is around it. So technically I'm not a seminarian, although I am an ordained minister. I have, I have married my kids and, my oldest son and, and done things. And, yeah, but more spiritual than religious. I'm not a big religious guy. and I've worked with some of the biggest religions in the world when I was on Wall Street, the Catholic Church, the, denominational traditions that are around, even Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist. they've all got money. and I, I always kind of fell into the guy who didn't judge anybody, so it was easy for me. Like, for example, I used to do a tremendous amount of Catholic work, the Archdiocese of Chicago, Miami, all of these things. I did their finance work for them. And I think they liked that I was not Catholic, and they really liked that I didn't judge or question or say anything. It's just, dude, if that's your tradition, live it to the fullest, en- enjoy life. I think when we all, when we, when it's all said and done, I think we're all gonna realize that we were mostly wrong and a little bit right. And what we all got right is the concept that love wins. So love is the universal truth, that goes out there, and sometimes we forget about that. And whatever your tradition is, man, that's great. Just go live it and enjoy it and, and have a good time. So the concept of no judgment at the same time of reflecting on people's traditions, really helped me out, along the way because I was able to meet these beautiful people all over the world that even I work with now, and just respect them and treat them the way they wanna be treated. And, I don't know, that, that type of, social construct, I guess, allowed me to have access to things that I'm very fortunate about that a lot of people don't get to do or see or experience. And it really wasn't anything special about me. It was just I was a kid who raised his hand and said, "I'll try it. I'll do it." But deep down inside, it's I'll do it without judgment, I'll do it with respect, and, I'll just try to get along with everybody. 'Cause again, at the end of the day, love wins

Erik Solbakken: That was what I was gonna ask you. You've, you've had e- exposure to so many different religions and spiritual teachings- Yeah. and, and you and I have had some very deep conversations in terms of the meaning of a lot of the things. And, s- mainly around the, say we call it the Christian spiritual scriptures. Sure. But re- revisiting it from a lens of- Maybe it's not necessarily stories of actual people, but it's more of an ethos of how to behave in the world. Yeah. Like, we've had that conversation with the Dr. Jordan Peterson been doing this new, like he's- Yeah. been really diving deep into that area, just trying to extract the essence of the teachings. And I've personally found that when I've explored all these different religions, they all have the same ethos at the core. Yeah. And I think you've just simplified it down, it's is just that it's love. Love wins, right?

Don Barden: Love wins every single time. That's it, whether it's Hindu, Buddhist, whatever. I've always joked that after, almost 60 years of studying Christianity, I can tell you that Jesus was a really good Buddhist with a Hebrew accent. And I think if you look at it and go, "Hey, wait a minute, everything he's saying fits really good into Buddhism and also Hindu." And, yeah, what is that underlying theme that seems, seems to cross, cross the lines? And it's love. It's that we're here to care for each other and not to judge each other. And my biggest aha moment was recently when I was able to work through this concept of the last judgment, where we might have gotten that wrong. Because you're right, the Bible, the scriptures, the Torah, whether it be, the Jewish version, the Christian version, the Chris- Christian adaptation and modification and mutation that we've gone through over the past, 1,700 years of having a, a functional Bible, if you wanna call it that, is we've adjusted and adapted it, to make it fit where we are today. But the construct of it, if you go back to the writers, the people who really wrote it, what were they trying to say? What were they doing? And I think the Bible is just a series of morality plays where they're saying stories that you need to take out and do it. So I'm very careful. I don't say the word God thing or words God thing. When people go, "Ooh, that's a God thing," or, "That's a God thing," I'm like, where does that start and stop? I think breathing's a God thing, So I'm like, everything's a God thing, right? But you go back and look at it, and when people say, "Oh, the Bible is, breathed. It's every word is pure in the word of God," I'm not gonna lay out five different versions of the Bible and say, "Well, which one is it?" Because they all have little different translations and similarities. Lots of mistranslations. Oh my God, you wanna screw up your faith, go to seminary. And, and you, you realize that, the things that your Sunday school teacher might have told you as a good person, great person, but they're just repeating what they were told and they were told, and there wasn't a lot of academic standards in it. And, you got Dan McClain out there, probably one of the greatest Bible scholars ever as far as translation goes, and he's like, ", the very first line of the Bible is mistranslated.", when it says, "In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth," that's right, we get it. But what it really says in the ancient scriptures is, "When God began to create- So that implies a process. So then you say, "But wait a minute." Then it goes on to multiple creation stories. In the first few chapters of Genesis, there's at least two, maybe three different creation stories. You gotta pick which one is right for you. So to sit there and say, "Oh, this is exactly what it says", in our context in, in, the early, 2000, 2024, 2025, whenever this thing airs, you gotta look at it and say, "How arrogant are we to take something that was written thousands of years ago to an audience that's not us and say, 'Oh, this is what they meant. This is what they were saying.'" I think the God thing in the Bible is the ability to look at it, extrapolate that morality play, and say, " what? It doesn't matter if that first line was, translated right or wrong. It doesn't matter, whether Isaac really did, get killed, Abraham and Isaac. what does it matter? What's the morality play? What's the story that's trying to be told? That's the God thing, is that after tens of thousands of years for some of the scriptures is to be able to say, "Oh, I get it. Yeah, that is a good thing. I can apply that to my life." To sit there and say, "This is literally everything that it meant, and it was a forecast of this and that," I was a kid that looked at it and go, "It doesn't say that. You said that." And it developed into a, a term or a, a phrase that I like to teach students when I'm, I put my professor hat on is you write to be read. You speak to be heard So when you're speaking, like you and I are speaking, we're speaking and talking to each other 'cause I expect you to hear it and the listeners to hear it, and vice versa, right? If I was typing something out, I would be typing it radically different because we don't speak in perfect English. We speak in our vocal, conception of you and I being able to communicate with each other. But if somebody doesn't see us talking, doesn't know the concept of what we're doing, and you wrote it out, you'd have to write it a little bit different. So you write to be read, you speak to be heard. The danger on this, Eric, is when somebody says, "Let me tell you what I read and what it means." Oh, okay, now you gotta back up a little bit, 'cause that's that person's perception of it. And in the, the construct of religion, people love to tell you their perception. They love to tell you that this is what it says. And when you're a little bitty kid and you're growing up, you're like, "Oh yeah, I guess that's what it says." And then some people as an adult have an aha moment where they're like, "I don't. I. Maybe that's not what they meant. Maybe that's not what they said." So I spent a lot of time going through the Bible and saying, "Why don't we look at this as an adult? Why don't we look at this." Throw Sunday school out. Throw out the concept that somebody when you were five years old or 10 years old when you were in Sunday school class said to you, "Hey, wait a minute. Let me tell you what it says." Well, now I can say as an adult, I appreciate that they had that perception on this, but I need to read what's written, and I need to interpret that and be able to say, "Okay, I get it." And then you threw a little bit of academia around it and some history and you start studying it, and you go, "Oh, that's a pretty good storyline. That's a really good storyline, and it makes a lot of sense." And, I said this the other day and I'll probably get hit by lightning, especially by a few, super conservative Christians. If we vanish from the face of the earth and humanity is gone for 300,000 years- And some future generation, some future explorers find us. And let's say they find a DVD, and they figure out how to play DVDs and it's the Star Wars trilogy. And they look at it and they go, "Oh, wow, look at this. There was a argument going on between good and evil and the Empire and the not Empire, and there's this story of this hero, this fallen hero who rises up and gets knocked back down, and he falls in love." And, a little weird because it's his sister. But then it fall and goes back up. I know, you gotta love George Lucas. Yeah. And then the father, the evil father, Darth Vader, turns good and, all this stuff. It's a morality play, right? So Lucas didn't write that to say that a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away this really happened. He wrote it to tell a story, a morality play. A Saturday afternoon cowboy movie is what it is. And, and put the, s- the good guys in white, the bad guys wore the black hats, and the Empire and all that stuff. But if you find that 300 years from now, people are gonna look at it and go, "Oh, that's what really happened." George Lucas is rolling over in his graves going, ", dude, I was just trying to tell a story."? If that exists now, why doesn't exist back then? Most of those writers were telling stories, poems, and, and bringing things together. Now, do I believe in a divine wind? Yeah. Do I believe that there is a wonderful creator out there who's done something for us? Yes. Do I believe I understand it? No fricking way. There's no way I understand it. The only thing I understand is that love wins. And if you go back and look at the scriptures, whether it be the Hindu stuff that you and I have talked about before, whether it be any of them, what are you taking out of it? How does it apply to you today? The morality story, not the absolute this is what it says, because in most times it doesn't. That's just what somebody told you it says. That's their perception. So if somebody really wants to do it, and I'd say this to classes all the time, especially within the church when I teach there, is I always say, "How many of you have read the Bible?" And everybody raises their hand. I'm like, "Yeah, how long did it take you?" And they're like, ", hmm, well, I've been reading it all my life." Oh, yeah, but, it's a thick book, and thin pages. So how. what, a year, two years? You read a chapter a night? How long did it. And then you realize that most people never read it. They're just going off of what somebody told them. And I'm like, "But dude, it's probably one of the greatest collections of articles and books ever bound together. You need to go back and read it. Read it beginning to end just like you would Harry Potter, and you're gonna be fascinated at the storyline.", dude, there is sex, drugs, rock and roll, betrayal. it's some good dirty stuff in there, right? but nobody wants to talk about that. They just wanna talk about, oh, Noah's Ark, and all the animals were happy. And you're like, well, one version of Noah's Ark says there were two by two. Another one says it was seven. Another one said, what, whoa, does that matter? No. It doesn't matter at all. What's the morality play, within it? So I think from a spiritual point of view, we've got some great lessons out there that's been handed down for generations that have not changed, and we continue to write great lessons, and we continue to repeat those stories in our everyday life. So to me, it's about looking at spirituality on two different things. It's your connection with the creator, but it's also your acceptance of a gift to say, hey man, this stuff, whether it's biblical or whether it's Hindu or Buddhism, all of it's a beautiful tale that I can get something out of it that'll make my life better. That if my life is better, then I'm able to love better, and that means I can share love with other people, and that way there's a mutual win there. So to me, spirituality is the radical acceptance that we don't know, but there's all these little clues that have been given to us, and those clues are pretty darn consistent. And if you get your head out of the sand and say, yeah, forget if this is exactly literally this or that, if it was Noah, whatever, it doesn't matter. It literally does not matter. What do you get out of it? How does that make you a better person, and how does that give you the ability to love? Dude, you're gonna be fine, And I think that's what spirituality is.

Erik Solbakken: Dude, you see, this is what I knew would happen. I would find a little spot, I would do a little spin, and it would send it off-. with a incredible explanation of your perspective of what's happened with. You just encapsulated a whole course discord. Like, you, you could have an entire course at university. You could be teaching that entire. Just what you shared with us there, that's an entire course in itself. And, and you've taken the words right out of my mouth in terms of- Of where I think the, we've c- we've got it wrong, where we're looking. People fighting wars over whether or not Adam and Eve were real people as opposed to going, "What does this story tell us about the human nature?" And it's interesting, did you see the podcast with Jordan Peterson and, and, Richard Dawkins?

Don Barden: Oh, where he was talking about the Adam and Eve story?

Erik Solbakken: The, the two of them are going after each other, and it's exactly what you just put out there. Ri-, Jordan Peterson's talking about let's extract the essence of the teaching and the, and the story out of it, and Dawkins is just sitting there st- he will not move. He's like, "Well, are you telling me they're real people? If, 'cause if they're not real people, I don't believe it." And, and like- Yeah. the two of. They would not move. Like, they. Listening to it, it was like, are they not seeing the insanity here? Yeah. Like, let's try and extract what we can from it. And I love what you also added here, Don, is, is if you haven't read it, go read it. Yeah. Go explore it. And that's the whole essence of the Viking explorer ethos is go explore. Go read it for yourself. Don't just take it from someone else's mouth. When someone tells you what they've read, you've just said it's a different interpretation of what- Yeah. was read. So if you read it yourself, you'll see something differently. 'Cause I've read a whole bunch of things that other people told me about, and I read it- Oh, yeah. and I went, "That's not what it says."

Don Barden: Oh, yeah. Oh, 100%. And I've got in trouble a little bit. I've gotten some, hate mail maybe if you wanna say that because I'm like, like, let's look at this morality play here. Let's look at what's being said with these classic biblical stories. And but let's ask questions. Let's say to yourself, let's just be honest, that didn't make sense. That, man, that's a weird turn in the story. I wonder why that happened. Like, for example, one of my favorite ones to teach, and I do teach this, at the Army, when I'm teaching leadership in what's called the Leadership and Professional Development Program. I love to go over the story of Lazarus. it's a famous story. God, millions of movies been made about this thing, Lazarus coming back from the dead, and Jesus raised him from the dead. And I'm like, yeah, but there's a problem here. There's a big problem here i- in this story. number one, if you go back and read it, I think it's in the Book of, Luke, Luke's gospel. But it says that Jesus, and if you read the pure translation in Greek and in Hebrew, his cousin Lazarus, he was notified that his cousin, who they're probably the same age, was dying. So these are, these are two kids that had play dates together, right? They know each other. It's not like it's some random guy on a list and it's like, "Oh, Jesus, here's this other dude who's got this special request. Can you. His family needs some help," or whatever. No, there was an intimacy there. They knew each other. And it also says it was a half morning's walk. That's like going to Starbucks, This isn't very far. So Jesus gets notice that your cousin, who you love, is dying, and you can help. Jesus doesn't go. He literally screws around. A- and people come up to him and, "Hey, what about that, that memo we just got, that email about Lazarus over there?" And he's like, ", yeah, whatever." And, and he doesn't go till the next day. And then the next day he walks to Starbucks, however long half a morning's walk is, and he goes over there, and the first thing that happens is he's met by these women. And I tell people, I say, "This is like out of a Seinfeld episode." Imagine the classic New York Jewish woman, and she's pissed, and she comes up and goes, "If you had been here, if you had been." And she's just yakking at him, and Jesus is like, "Whoa, lady, back off. I'm, I just got here." So it's, it's kind of funny. But you read the story and you're like, and you ask questions and you visualize it. And, and when I tell people, try to feel it. What would the, what would the sun have been like at 9 or 10 o'clock in the morning? What would the smell, the arid smell, the beautiful smell of no pollution, of, the, the flowers and the things around? Imagine Jesus walking up to this tomb area. These women are just yak, yak, yak, yak, yak going at him. And he goes, "Whoa, chicks, back off." And, and then he says, "Okay, wait a minute." And then this is where the Bible gets really weird, or the story goes. It says Jesus says a prayer, and his prayer is, "Father." His connection was a father-son connection, a- an authoritative connection. But Jesus also, when he said Father, in a lot of the translations it was Abba, and Abba means daddy. So it's a, it's a different type of thing. It's not like, "Oh, my dad's gonna be pissed." It's like, "Hey, Daddy, can you help me?" So there was, there was a different type of vibe there. But he says this prayer and he says, ", Father, Daddy, help me do what I have to do so that they might believe." And then it gets weird Jesus weeps. Shortest line in the Bible. You tell any little Bible kid, "Hey, go memorize a verse of the Bible," that's it. Jesus wept. That's the whole verse. Anybody can figure that one out, right? So that's a popular verse. And then it says, Jesus says, "Roll." 'Cause Lazarus was already buried. In Jewish tradition, the day you die, you're buried, you're wrapped up, you're sealed, it's over. Boom. Out. So they'd already sealed the tomb, and Jesus says, "Unseal it." And now these same people who were like, "If you had been here," boy they changed their mind. They're like, "Oh, wait a minute. he died yesterday. It's a little stinky-poo. we don't. Maybe we just leave this one alone. Sorry, got emotional. Our bad." And then Jesus says, "Lazarus, come out." And what's interesting in the dialect, I've had scholars tell me that I'm right about this, is in the translation, the way his dialect comes out, it's not a Charlton Heston, Cecil B. DeMille 1950s movie where Jesus goes, "Open the tomb and come out,"? He literally says it with some level of disgust, like, "Lazarus, come out." He's, he's irritated at this. So I started looking at this going, man, that story doesn't match what I was told in Sunday school. If you go back to Sunday school it's like, yeah, Jesus got word that they're. And he walked over there and everybody was upset, and he wanted to raise him, and he was so caught up in the, the mourning of the people and the women that he emotionally got overcome. And then he, he saved the day by raising Lazarus. And I'm like, yeah, that's, that's not what it says. In fact, it doesn't make any sense because he was told a day before. He screws around. He doesn't go. He knows he's going to die. Why would he be overcome with emotion then? This is supposed to be the most enlightened person on the planet, probably to ever walk the planet with the Buddhas and everybody else. This dude gets it. Why would he get emotional, especially after he screwed around and didn't go? And I'm like, that just doesn't make sense. And then it hit me. The answer is not why he wept. The answer is buried in his prayer. He, he. And nobody wants to talk about this, and it always irritated me. Like, why don't you ask critical questions here? But it was like, okay, why did the most enlightened man in the world weep? It's in the prayer. In the prayer he says, "Father, help me do this so that they might believe." Who did he not pray for? Lazarus. Lazarus. Right? And so then you think, "Well, that's a little weird.", if you're gonna pull off a magic trick you're like, "Oh God, please help me do this. Boy, this is gonna look bad if this doesn't work."? you would think that he's saying, "Oh, oh boy, I hope this works,"? "Remember what I'm supposed to say,"? He doesn't do that. He, he, he, he literally says, "Help me do this that they might believe." And then he's overwhelmed and he cries. And then in disgust he says, "Lazarus, come out." So I'm looking at this critically going, what is the real morality play here? This is why I teach it for the US Army in leadership. The morality play is Jesus wasn't overwhelmed by those women. He knew it. He, he screwed around for a day before he went there. If in the prayer he prays for everybody other than Lazarus, then what does that tell you about Lazarus? It tells you that Lazarus is about to get screwed Think about this. Lazarus, if you believe in heaven, and I do, or some- something, I don't know, something's gotta be out there, right? but you're in the agape, you're in the love, the presence of God herself, the great creator. Lazarus is up there rocking it. he's having a good time. Whatever you want to believe heaven is, it's better than this. So imagine you're dead. Okay, the process sucked, but you're there, okay? And all of a sudden you get a tap on the shoulder. Poor Lazarus, somebody comes up to him and says, ", we, we got a problem, and, we need you to go back down there and go through this life thing again so that some of these people are gonna believe. But, hey, we got a problem here. Here's the real problem. Roman Empire's not gonna dig this. They're gonna be kind of, they're gonna. You're gonna have a target on your back the rest of your life, and, yeah, it's not gonna go good for you. But here's the deal. Will you do us a, will you do us a solid here? Will you go back down there and help us spread this morality? Help us spread the news that there is a God, a creator, who loves you, and we're willing to show how to prove it. It's gonna suck for you." And what Jesus, I think, was doing there was showing his vulnerability as a great leader, and he was saying to himself, "Okay, I know what I have to do." And what he had to do was put Lazarus, his cousin, somebody he grew up with, he had to put Lazarus in harm's way. He had to ask him to leave the glory of heaven, of the presence of the creator, come back just to prove a point, and it's gonna be rough. I think that's why he wept, and I think that's why in disgust he said, "Lazarus, come out," 'cause he hated to do what he had to do to Lazarus, but at the same time he was a great leader. And in his vulnerability, he did the hard thing. He did what he had to do, even if it meant putting somebody he knew in harm's way, but he did it. He did it, and he, he went on to do great things. Now, we lose track of Lazarus. There's different rumors and traditions that he went on to start some of the bigger movements, outside of the Middle East, but we don't, we don't really know. But what we do know is if you read it as an adult and you open your mind to your own spirituality and you ask questions and you read it and you're critical in it, not to be critical of the story, but to be critical of your own thought process, then you're gonna look at this and go, "Oh, maybe that's a little bit different than what my Sunday school teacher told me when I was five years old." And but it opens up this whole new thing, and when I teach that down at Ranger School, for the Army, they get it, because their job is to put people in harm's way. Their job is to accomplish a mission that's so great it allows you to sleep at night, in the comfort of your home. And, and but they're willing to do whatever it takes to put in the work, and if it means to put your friend in harm's way- That's leadership. And I think that story is really a great play around leadership, and it's a really solid play around vulnerability, that leaders are allowed to cry. Leaders are allowed to be vulnerable, but do your job. And if that's your job and that's what you have to do, do it. And but it's okay to be vulnerable in it. I think that's a much better lesson that we can get out of a story like that than, oh, Jesus was overcome and he just cried 'cause all the ways we're kind of yakking at him. Mm, not what it says. So now, am I right? I don't know. I wasn't there. Has that story been adapted thousands of times? Yeah. But the storyline that we've got makes a whole lot of sense if you read it as an adult and you open it up to your own spiritual interpretation of what the morality play wa- was really all about. So whereas Peterson, Peterson's really good about that. Peterson digs into what the story is about and what it meant in the social construct of the time. McClellan, who I love dearly, the translator, the probably the greatest authority out there when it comes to biblical translation, he's more about the facts. He's like, "Nope, that's what it says. Just what it says." And it's like, but what does it mean? McClellan doesn't go into meaning outside the words. Peterson takes it and says, "Okay, 2,000 years later, I dig this. I've learned something from this." So that's what I think that's about, including the Hindu texts, the Buddha texts. They're all great, They're all telling similar stories. And if you think about what Jesus did, love won, He loved everybody so much that he was willing to put his friend in harm's way to accomplish a great deed. Now, it doesn't tell us what that deed is, 'cause that's not what the story is. The story's about vulnerability and leadership. And but they don't teach that to five-year-olds, So but you grow through life thinking, oh, that's what it's all about. I'm not sure. I'm not sure if it is or not.

Erik Solbakken: That is absolutely brilliant, 'cause this is what I wanted to hopefully get out of this podcast, is have you explain some of this concept of relooking at- spirituality and rereading it and exploring it and analyzing it with your, with clear eyes, being an explorer and re- don't just accept it because someone says it. Go and look at it and try and extract what the meaning is for you. That's the whole purpose of the Viking Academy is to be an explorer and go look. Yeah. Now, you said something here and I really wanna add this piece, and this is, this is a little more personal and, and, and, and closer to the heart for you, but I want our readers to understand this. as we're talking that love wins, Don just also mentioned that he, he does courses for the Army Rangers. You are a Ranger. You have gone and done those things that Rangers need to do and- Yeah. to do bad things to bad people, as you've called it- Yeah. before. Yeah. This isn't, Don isn't a guy that is all love and roses and, and, and, and let's just love everybody. Oh, I am

Don Barden: now.

Erik Solbakken: I'm, I'm totally. You, you, dude-. you, you, you, when the zombie apocalypse happens, I want you on my- You want

Don Barden: me. You want

Erik Solbakken: me with you on that one. You want, okay, you, you, you are like a trained warrior-

Don Barden: Yeah.

Erik Solbakken: but you have this combination of the spirituality and the warrior minds, the, the mindset, the body of a warrior and the mind of a warrior and the spirit of a warrior. Like, you, you encompass the Viking Academy ethos so beautifully. That's why I was so happy when you said yes to be on the podcast, 'cause I wanted to share this with everybody, that it's not just all about one or the other. You need to, you need to balance all three. Once you bring all three together, then you start to become whole. You start to become whole into one. So how do you- And I think you just shared it in this story, but how do you combine your deep spiritual belief and understanding with your God, with the, the creator, with the things that you did in the Army Rangers and which is some pretty horrific shit you had to do? How do you put those together, and how can you help the listener understand how they. They may seem like opposites, but they're not when you put it together- Not at all. for you. Yeah. Like, you under- you've integrated it into yourself. I think that's the word I'm looking for.

Don Barden: Yeah. Well, first of all, it's not about me. There's thousands and thousands of people who give their lives, so that others can sleep at night. And, one of my favorite poems is Flanders Field, which, on, Veterans Day, which is coming up, or I don't know whether it is in Canada, the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, the world knew peace. It was the end of the First World War. And Flanders wrote a poem, about looking out over the field and all the death and carnage after this battle, and he says. He was talking about the young men there, the dead ones, and he said, "For your tomorrow, we gave our today." In other words, somebody was willing to sacrifice their today and sacrifice their life so that you and I can have a better tomorrow. And that's been going on since the dawn of time. So this isn't a me story. This is a thing. But what I ask people, and it's a pretty common thing out there, even Peterson's talked about it, everyone needs to decide at some point in their life, do you wanna be a warrior in a garden or a gardener in a war? I suggest you, you sheath your sho- sword and you become a warrior in a garden. There's nothing wrong with it, because when that day comes and you're called, you might have to do bad things to bad people, because it is not a pretty world. We don't all agree. There's not a world where everybody's walking around singing and holding hands and like, like, just think the world is. Whatever the Coke song is, I'd like to share the, a Coke with the world or whatever. Yeah, that's great. That's lovely. That ain't gonna happen. we're not there yet. We're, we're hundreds of years out of our evolutionary and social construct from being able to say, yeah, let's just all get along. So this is a rough world, out there. Not everybody agrees. And so be very thankful that there are people out there today who, by the way, the average age is 23 years old, and they're willing to give their tomorrow for your today, and I honor that, for these people. But if you're gonna have a tomorrow because somebody gave their today, you goddamn better make it good. that's all I can say to people. you've got a chance 'cause people have given everything for you, and they have throughout time. And that, to me, is the way of honoring them, is by living the best life you can, which means to explore, to ask questions, to think about things radically different. And within that thinking, you radically accept it and you say, "Oh-" Man, is that a seismic shift that I realized that my Sunday school teacher who meant well really did, they didn't know what they were talking about. Or, they did the best they could when they were five years old, but nobody thought that it was gonna stick with you the rest of your life. And there are people within the religion of the church, which I can't stand that side of it, that can argue with you that, yeah, we needed the church as we were evolving through the Dark Ages and through everything to create some construct and structure, some guardrails around us, but that bred, absolutely bred corruption, and it, it, it bred power and things. And again, you cannot judge the past. And I tell cl- students all the time, I'm teaching tomorrow at Wharton, and one of the things I'm gonna talk about is that you cannot judge the past. And everybody likes to do that now. They like to come back and go, "Well, 200 years ago, your great-great-grandfather did this, so you owe me." Like, really? Okay, let's talk about this for a second. Let's just be a little spiritual and understand how time really works as we spin around this planet, going through the universe, expanding and doing all the stuff we're doing. And I beg people, do not judge the past, and here's why You are the past of our future selves. In other words, your great-great-grandchildren are gonna look back at you and judge you, and they're gonna judge you for things that you think is perfectly fine in today's social construct. And, and the example I always use is medical science. We're the most advanced medical science cre-, species ever to walk on the planet. We do heart trans- we do eye transplants. We can fix teeth. We can do things that nobody else has been able to do in history, and we think we're so advanced and so good. Well, let me tell you, your great-great-great-grandchildren are gonna look back at you and call you a fucking barbarian. Sorry. you said it's explicit, so we're gonna do this. Oh. Yeah, yeah, please drop F bombs. They're gonna go, "Fucking. " Oh, good. Oh. Oh, good. I'll do. What's, how do you say fuck in Canada? Fucky.

Erik Solbakken: Fucky.

Don Barden: Okay, good.

Erik Solbakken: No, I just. Y- you just put an A at the end of everything and you-

Don Barden: And everything works. Okay. good. so a- anyway, your future self, your, your great-great-grandchildren are gonna look back at you on things that we think we're advanced on and we're so good at, and they're gonna call you a barbarian. They're gonna say, "My God, can you believe they used scalpels? They stitched people up. They took body parts out and put new. Ew." 'Cause they're not gonna have to do that anymore, but they're gonna judge us. So why do we wanna judge our past? We need to live in the present and say, what can we bring from the past to today that helps us be better, to stay on this constant flow that love really does win? And those, whether it be Hindu, Christian, Buddhist, some of them I don't like, and some other things, or I, I question how it's been interpreted over the years. But at the end of the day, those morality plays that keep coming back are so consistent that you can look through the Bible and there's probably only seven or eight storylines out of the 60 something books that are in there. There's only seven or eight storylines, and you gotta look at that and say, "Hmm- What's happening here? What is this constantly repeating, and what do I need to take away from my Sunday school brain and put into a positive application of it? Like, if I got two seconds, I'll tell you my other favorite story in the Bible, which I think we got wrong. It's in Matthew, the fourth chapter of Matthew, and a lot of people know this. It's the temptation of Christ. And I was reading that going, "Man, this doesn't make sense as an adult. It doesn't make sense at all.", and, and there's been movies made out of it. It's a great storyline where Jesus goes to meet Satan, Satan, the deceiver, which ironically in the original translation wasn't a bad thing. It was sort of the 11th man theory, where Satan's job was to say, "Well, wait a minute, I got another idea." It's literally to go against the crowd. That's what the earliest translation meant. But okay, let's just go through church tradition. you've got the Creator, and you got this guy Lucifer over there, and they get in a little spat, and Lucifer wants more equity in the deal, right? And, and God the Creator goes, "Nah, you're out of here. You're fired," sends him down to Earth. So now all of a sudden nobody's. For whatever reason, the Bible doesn't say this, why in the heck nobody's paying attention to Earth. Now Satan, Lucifer, has market share, like significant market share, and the Creator says, "Oh, man, we gotta get ahold of that little. nobody paid attention to that outpost over there, but it's pretty significant in that part of the galaxy. We need to send somebody down there." So he sends his son, Yeshua, Jesus, and says, "Hey, look, you gotta fix that thing." And he goes, "Okay." And so Jesus goes, and he, he's got a new job assignment, right? Now skip to the fourth chapter of Matthew. And it's really, really weird if you look at it like an adult. Jesus knowingly, and it says he fasted for 40 days, which is like when somebody says, "Oh man, I need a billion dollar drill." It's just an expression, right? But he clearly skipped lunch at least, okay? So he's a little vulnerable. And he goes, what does he do? He voluntarily goes to his dad's old partner, who now has market share here, and he meets with him. He's not seduced. He walks in. And so he went to the competition and said, "Hey, dude. Let's, let's have a drink. let's talk. let's see, let's see what's going on. I know you were friends with my dad. It didn't work out, but hey, let's talk." Right? And so if you go through the temptations that Satan, Lucifer, gave to Jesus, doesn't make sense at all. There's no drugs. There's no rock and roll. There's nothing cool. There's no sex. I'm like, if you're gonna tempt, do it good, So I'm like, wait a minute. What, what are the temptations? And then I realize, I think we got it backwards. I don't think Lucifer was tempting Jesus. I think we have the comma in the wrong place. I think Jesus was tempting Lucifer. 'Cause if you think about this, what was the very first temptation? Lucifer says to Jesus, "Hey, you're so good you can convince anybody that this rock is bread. you, we could sell a ton of rock and people think it's just bread." And, and, and what Lucifer was doing was saying, "Hey, you come work for me. I'm gonna put you in charge of all sales and marketing. But, we're not really clean around here. So you're gonna have to sell these stones and tell people it's bread, but it's a lot of money in rocks that people think are bread." And Jesus goes, "Yeah, that's not, that's not how you run a business. I'm not gonna do that." And then Lucifer pulls out the second temptation, and it's an old memo, an email or something. And he says, "Look, it's written right here. It says that your, your dad, the Creator, he's not even gonna let you stump your toe. You can always go back. Come on over, give it a try, and if it doesn't work, you just go back. No harm, no foul." And Jesus looks at him and goes, "Dude, have you not seen my dad change his mind? Oh, that's epic shit there, man.", you don't, you don't, don't mess with that dude. He does change his mind sometimes. and he, by the way, he changes his mind in the very first chapter of Genesis where he told Adam, "If you do this, you're going to die." And he did, he didn't die. But anyway, forget that. So anyway, so he gets, he, it s- shows this memo, and he goes, "Eh, that's." And then Lucifer says, "Look, here's the deal. Let me show you everything that's going on around the world. These Romans, they can't see more than 5 or 600 kilometers away from here. Let me show you what's going on. Hey, here's the Han Dynasty over in China. Nobody even knows they're there. Oh, they're rocking it. Look at the Peruvian Empire over here. Look at Japan. look at what's happening in modern, Peru. yeah, nobody knows this stuff's going on, but these are all my factories all over the world. Here's the deal, kid, you come work for me, you're gonna be the CEO. I'm still the chairman of the board, but you're the CEO." And Jesus goes, "No, that's not what I'm here to do. See ya. Good luck to you." And, and then Jesus walks out, and it says a limo pulls up full of angels, and he starts his ministry the next day. And I was looking at it going, "Is that really a temptation or is that a conversation? And who's tempting who?" I think Jesus went into a job interview with the competition. He probably, if we want to roll that, it says, eh, he probably wasn't really gonna take it, but he sure as heck walked into it and skipped lunch over it, right? And so he was offered head of sales and marketing. That didn't work. He was shown a memo that says, "Hey, you have a non-compete here, but it's dumb. You can go back. Your dad won't hold you to that. And, but if that doesn't work, let me show you what's really going on in the world. You can run it all." And Jesus said, "No, it's not what I'm here to do." I really think Jesus was tempting Lucifer. I don't think Lucifer was tempting Jesus. And but again, oh, say something like that and you can get spikes thrown at you, in the church. But I'm looking at it going, "Why can't we have this conversation?" And I don't know if I'm right. I have no idea if I'm right. But as an adult, as a business person, we can look at that and go Hmm, that kind of makes sense, doesn't it? And, that makes it more understandable. Why would he be tempted? Why would he do this? And all the preachers will say, "Oh, he wanted to show his humanity and he could overcome temptations." Mm, no. I, I think you got that backwards. And by the way, that really pissed off Lucifer, and he didn't let go of that thing. He hung in there, to the very end, and even to the point when Jesus was dying, if you look at the arc of the story, he, he looks at him, I think he says, "It's done." I got a feeling he was looking at Lucifer and said, "Yeah, it's done, but I got you,"? So, I don't know. I just think there's so many more beautiful ways of looking at this. And again, full disclosure, I do not know if I'm right. I'm not claiming that I'm right. I'm just saying it's worthy of a conversation. And it allows you to explore spirituality in a completely different level. And then you see, oh, crap, that story's repeated over here, and it's repeated in that, in the, in the American Indians. That is similar- And you start going through this and you go, "Oh, that's one of those seven or eight stories, isn't it?" And what is it really trying to teach us? It's trying to teach us that you have to critically think through something and make a good decision, and if your heart is being pulled in a direction of love, that's the way to go. Now, the process might stink, it might not be what you think, but love wins. And at the end, if you think about it, what was Jesus' last words? "Forgive them. They, they don't know what they're doing." That's the greatest expression of love ever, is to let the people who are bringing harm on him say, "Hmm, that's good." And even the guys hanging next to him, we don't know much about those guys, if it even existed, but we do know that he said, "I love you and I'll see you tonight." And that's a beautiful thing. He didn't say you had to be dunked, and sprinkled, you had to say a prayer. He just said, ", love wins. I'll see you tonight." And that's a beautiful, beautiful way of knowing that the Creator's got us. We're, we're covered, man. We're good. We're better if we express love. We're better if we watch these and listen to these morality plays and extrapolate how we can go help and serve other people and treat them the way they wanna be treated. It's better if we get rid of all judgment and say, "Look, I'm not gonna judge anybody anymore." And you and I have talked about that. The last judgment theory is really simple. That when Jesus said, "Forgive them, Father,", he wasn't necessarily saying, "Don't judge them," he was saying, "I don't judge them." And I think that's nirvana. When a person says, "You harmed me," or, "You did me bad," or whatever, "I'm not gonna hang out with you anymore. I don't like you, but I'm not gonna judge you." Man, the freedom of letting those shackles go where you don't judge anybody. Doesn't mean you have to hang out with them, doesn't mean you have to even like them, but no judgment, man. If you're not judging somebody, then you're free to let that love come out of you and, and help other people. If you put the shackles of judgment on you all the time, even though every type of spiritual text out there tells you not to do it, if you do it, it's just gonna weigh you down, and you're not gonna be able to feel the presence of the universe, of the Creator. you're not gonna be able to feel the presence of love. So, but again, you and I have talked about this deeply, especially recently. There's gonna be some rough times. There's gonna be some turbulence, and you're gonna need to lean on people, and you help me, so thank you. Where, you say, "This is real love." Somebody's willing to help somebody else out and say, "Hey, I've been through this. Let me carry you. Let me pick you up. You're gonna be fine. It's okay to be in the fetal position. It's okay to cry. It's okay to be vulnerable. But trust me, I've seen this movie. You're gonna be fine." And, and help somebody negotiate that and wrestle with it versus having some little church lady come up to you or some person who hasn't even read it and say to you, "Oh, let me tell you what this says." Really? I, I'm just gonna read it myself, thank you. So I think that's, that's where we have to get to.

Erik Solbakken: That is fantastic, Don. Like, this is. I, I really see there's an opportunity here and a t- a r- a leveling up of con- consciousness in the world. Like, there's a consciousness leveling up, and I think part of it is seeing these spiritual teachings in these texts as, and revisiting them with a different lens, and you've so eloquently expressed that and extrapolated across a couple of the stories in the Bible, and saying, "Look at it differently from this angle as a moral teaching as opposed to an actuality." Yeah. And if we start looking at all of the spiritual texts from a teaching and a s- and an understanding point of view, you can extract so much out of it. Like I was sharing with you before, like did you get, did you read the Bhagavad Gita?

Don Barden: Oh, yeah.

Erik Solbakken: Did, did you read that? I- Oh,

Don Barden: and the concordance and everything. Oh, good Lord. The- Oh. that's small compared to the, the, the concordance around it that tells you what it says. Yes. I stopped that. I followed my own advice. I stopped that and just went into, the book itself, and it's beautiful. stunning- Isn't it? beautiful. Yeah. And it's- It's incredible.

Erik Solbakken: a

Don Barden: morality play, isn't it?

Erik Solbakken: It's a total morality play, and so when you look at all these different texts, and this is what you and I've talked about, it, they're all saying the same thing. They're moralities and they're. When we say morality, it's like, "Thou shalt not do this." It's no, like, "If you do this, bad shit's gonna happen to you." Yeah, yeah. So it's, that's like morality isn't like a, a judging, damning God. It's one going- Yeah. or, or a damning, shall we call it, textu- text that you're reading is damning you. Right. It's giving you a, a, a, a, a user's manual. Like- Yeah. I talk about this. Yeah. Like imagine you open it up and it says, "Here. Here's the user's manual for your body, known as Eric. And this is what you do to help you traverse this life." And ultimately- The things that I've learned through studying all these different. The Quran, the Kolbrin Bible, the, the, the, the New Testament, the, the Bhagavad Gita, the story of the Buddha, like all of them, they all have the same underlying, and I start seeing the connections and the dots, and they come together. The stories of Odin and Thor and Freya and the gods- Yeah. and the Greek gods and, and the, and the, the Native Indians or the Native Americans in, in, in, in North America here, and, and the First Nations people. Sorry, I always. Not really sure what they wanna call today. I get it. I get it. Yeah. I know. I know. But I'm just gonna- Yeah, they were here first, those guys. I'm gonna fuck- I'm gonna piss somebody off eventually- Yeah. but I'm trying to not do that. Yeah. But I'm just saying they all have that same ethos and that underlying teaching of how to maneuver yourself through life, but you'll never find it unless you're exploring it, unless you read it yourself and interpret it- Yeah and try and integrate it. And the other key pa- part about this that you've shared, Don, is that, and on your personal experience, is that you don't go alone.

Don Barden: Right.

Erik Solbakken: Don't do it by yourself.

Don Barden: Yeah.

Erik Solbakken: That's why I wanted to create the Viking Academy, to create the tribe of Vikings who wanted to pick up their sword and go explore, and do it together. Let's do- Yeah. This is the part that we've been so fragmented and disjointed and disconnected from one another in this digital age. Yeah. It's turned into a horrific crisis where we can't even do what you just said. That other thing that I wanted to just highlight for our listeners is you said we need to be able to have a dialogue and talk about these things. Like, you pointed out a bunch of things there that you would get in so much. I'm sure we're probably gonna get some comments on this that's, "Oh, you can't say that about the story of Jesus. That is blasphemy." Yeah. Well, wait a second. That's our problem right now, is that you can't, especially politically, if you're on the right versus the left, the right and the left won't even talk to each other. Right. If we can't sit down and talk to each other about stuff, about religion and politics, those are the two hotbeds, right?

Don Barden: Yeah.

Erik Solbakken: We can't come together and talk to one another about these two things- We're fucked

Don Barden: Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Erik Solbakken: We're so fucked

Don Barden: I, I saw Malcolm Gladwell speak the other night, in Atlanta, Georgia, and, he said something great. He walked into a bees' nest, man. he was supposed to be kind of interviewed on stage in front of about 1,000 people. It was at Symphony Hall. I don't know the person, and I might have gotten it wrong, but my interpretation as somebody sitting in the audience was she was extremely left wing, and she wanted him to talk about politics, and that's. She opened it up. Now, he's there to promote his new book, and she said, "Well, what do you think about politics?" He goes, " what? I." He, he was so gracious, so smart. He said, "I don't think I can add to that conversation. I'd rather talk about something else." And she's like, "No, we want to hear your opinion and all." And he said, and I'm paraphrasing, so Malcolm, forgive me if I don't get your story right, but this is how I interpreted it. He said, "If you take four people at dinner and you're all sitting around a table and you give them each a piech- piece of paper and a pen, and you say to each of the four people, 'Write down 10 things that are most important in your life,' and then you collect the papers back, and then you lay it out there. You're gonna realize that eight out of the 10 things that each person wrote was the same." It's those morality plays. There's only seven or eight stories. There's only seven or eight things that we care about, our f- families, our tomorrow, all this stuff. And he goes, "Okay, so we've got eight things that four people agree on are important, and they're passionate about it, and they're the same. These are four diverse people who don't know each other, yet they wrote down eight of the same things out of 10 that they care most about. But you want." Not you, but this interviewer. "You want to talk about the two things," which is really usually religion and politics, "that divide us." And he said, "I'd rather talk about the eight things that bring us together." And I thought, "Oh my God, how brilliant is that?" That why would you sit with somebody and start punching them and poking them when most people would just dig their heels in the ground over certain subjects? And I've always said, I tell students this too, there's only two arguments. An argument that wants to advance it together, where you can dialogue and you can communicate and you can talk to each other and you can learn and, and you're gonna change your mind and they're gonna change, and everybody's gonna grow together. That's one argument. Another argument is when you dig into the ground and you say, "No, I'm going to prove a point." That's not an argument. That's a pissing fight. And, and nobody's gonna budge, and that's the way politics is now. Nobody's gonna budge. So why do you wanna go there? Let them have their feelings. Let them have their beliefs. You have your feelings, you have your beliefs. But if eight out of 10 things that are out there that we all collaborate on and get along with and care about jointly, wouldn't we be better off spiritually, personally, professionally, everything, if we focus on those things that we all care about? And I think that's the story of everything in all the major, religions out there. There are some things that are common, and the number one thing is love wins. And that's, that's what we gotta get focusing on again.

Erik Solbakken: And, and so with the- ethos of the Viking Academy is w- I think one of the things that people are really want the most is to understand why the hell we're here. Like, what is our purpose? How do we fit into the whole picture? Like- Yeah. once we all agree that we're all still trying to figure this out together, and we don't stand up with bravado saying, "I understand, and I know exactly what's going on, and you should listen to me 'cause I've got it all figured out," e- anybody who says they got it all figured out is full of shit.

Don Barden: Yeah.

Erik Solbakken: Right? They're so full of shit, and they're very dangerous. I like to be able to be surrounding myself with a group of people who are still exploring and still growing and understanding who they are, and for you, I've seen, in the time that we've known each other, I've seen you grow in your understanding of who you are, and you- Oh, yeah balance those three areas, the mind, the body, and the spirit. You're an incredibly intellectual person. You think very deeply, but you're very connected with your spirit. And a physical warrior, again, like I said, zombie apocalypse comes, dude, you're coming to my house. Yeah. Yeah, you are, pal. But I've seen you grow and change and become more of who you were meant to be here- Yeah if that makes sense. Like, just, and you're fitting into the groove of the master plan, whatever it is, whatever it is, the universe. Al- I jokingly call it Allah, Buddha, Brahma, baby Jesus. It doesn't seem to give a shit what I call it- Yeah, yeah, yeah. as long as I'm seeking some sort of spiritual connection.

Don Barden: Yeah.

Erik Solbakken: You fit into that plan, and I truly believe that everyb- every single person is here for a reason, to be contributing to the whole. Without each individual person, we don't have- Right. the whole picture. Right. And, and, and the, the other thing that you and I have talked about, which I wanna share with our listeners is I said, "What the greatest gift that you've ever received in your life is you."

Don Barden: .

Erik Solbakken: Because not another human before or after will ever experience your life-

Don Barden: Yeah.

Erik Solbakken: or e- emotions, your experiences. Everything is 100% unique to you. Yep. Even this conversation you and I are having, I'm experiencing it different. You're experiencing it different. Our listeners are experiencing it different. We interpret it differently. That's the gift the universe gave you- And when you start to embrace and g- have gratitude, which is love, which I think is what you're talking about here- Yeah. once you realize that is pure love, that is the gift, then you start to see, oh, this is why I'm here. Oh, this. And you start to connect the dots. Right. And I've seen you connecting the dots over the last year, man. Like, you've- Yeah. connected the dots and worked through some really tough stuff, and it's just, it's been a pleasure to be a part of that ride with you, man. You saved me,

Don Barden: man. And that's why- You saved me. And I, I tell you, if anybody thinks that any, there's any one Messiah, there's not. We're all Messiahs. And I don't mean that with arrogance, but we all have a chance to save somebody else. And it could be small. It could be, "Oh, don't step in front of that train." Or it could be, "Hey, wait, let me tell you one of my experiences and tell you out of love, 'cause it might help get you there faster than if you plow through this on its own." And I remember, for all your Viking Academy, folks, and this is my experience in, with you as a Viking, I remember one time we were in British Columbia, in Kelowna I think, and it was a beautiful fall day. And it was warm but a little chilly, one of those British Columbia days, And you and I were out for a walk. We'd been working all day. And, we felt this beautiful breeze coming in over the lake, and, the glacier. Like, what's the name of that lake? I forgot.

Erik Solbakken: - It, it's, Okanagan. Lake

Don Barden: Okanagan. Okanagan. Yeah. but I remember that breeze came across, and you looked at me and you said, "Did you feel that breeze?" I said, "Yeah." And you said, ", we're the only two people in the world that felt that breeze at that moment standing right here, 'cause we're the only two people standing right here." And the irony is you said you felt it different than I felt it But that moment kind of came and went, and we experienced something together, but we still experienced it differently. Because it's, it's we're all eight billion people on the planet are experiencing life differently, but there is this commonality that goes through it. And I'll, I'll never forget what you helped me on the most was appreciating that it doesn't matter how smart you are, how versed you are, how many times you've been around the world, what you've seen, how you feel, where you are personally, professionally, and spiritually, it doesn't matter. You can still be victimized. And what I was a victim of was domestication, where I was in a certain part of my life I thought I had to act and do things a certain way, and I didn't realize I was trained to do that, and it wasn't good, and I didn't realize it, and I had to change that. And I put enormous amounts of effort and heartbreak into, to destroying that part of me so I can be free spiritually to live the way the gift. or to experience the gift that I had been given. But you can't do it, and I think this is one of Jesus' greatest things, is if you have a shackle over you, you can't see where you're going. If you have a plank in your eye, then don't talk to somebody else about their splinter in their eye. you've got to be clear to do it, and sometimes you're not gonna like that process, but man, you get through that process, that exorcism of taking something that's been holding you back and letting it go because it needs to be let go, then beautiful things start to happen. And my big aha moment in the spiritual journey, especially over the past year, was realizing that things don't end, they're complete And that was a big thing for me, that relationships, jobs, careers, life, it doesn't end. It's just complete. And when something's complete, that's a lot better than ending, 'cause you can sort of be grateful that you experienced that even though you didn't like it. But you can say, "That's complete. That's part of my life. But what did I extrapolate and learn from it? And then how can I share with other people when asked? What can I do to help share that love with them so that they don't have. hopefully they don't have to go through the same thing?", so that's a big deal, man. When you, you, you get to the point of consciousness where nothing is over, it's just complete, that means you can let it go. And I hate sports analogies because not everybody's into sports, but it's the only one I got on this. whether it's American football, soccer, European football, baseball, whatever, when the game's over, it is complete. They played nine innings. They're done. It's completed, and now it's time to move on to the next game. And the irony is the fans will be sitting around. I know this is World Series. I'm not sure when this is gonna air, but, Yankees are down three to one against the Dodgers right now, so we'll see if they can make a comeback. But when the game ended last night, the game was complete. The Yankees came back and they won, so they're still alive in this. But what? There were fans that were like all mad, the Dodger fans were upset, and, "It's over. God, we had one more inning," whatever. who didn't care about it? The players. The players had already moved on to the next game and said, "I can't wait for the next game." That game is complete. It's not coming back. Now, it's not over, 'cause if it was over, you'd be reminiscing and missing it and thinking about it and all that stuff. No, it's complete. So when you recognize that changes in your life are really a reflection of a completion of a plan, then you don't have to go back and think about it. Because the other thing I've learned, and you helped me on this a lot, in the Viking Academy, was- There, there's only one truth, and that's right now. Your memories of the past are really lies because it's your perception, and your brain chooses what to remember, good and bad from it, but it's not telling you the whole story, and it's certainly not looking at all those other variables involved that contributed to that. So when you look backwards and think about something, hopefully you can do it with gratitude and say, "That part of my life is complete, and now because of that completion, I can move on to something else." But don't live in the past. And the same thing goes for the future. The future is a lie, too, because it's hopes and dreams. And if you're sitting there saying, "Oh, I've got to do this." And we've got three rules around that, at my office here about the future. Number one is you never fall in love with an asset, ever. You love people, you love memories, you love experiences. You don't love things, right? Number two is never be married to an outcome, which is really about the future. I've seen so many people, especially in mergers and acquisitions on Wall Street, they are hell-bent on getting that done, and they're missing the fact that there's a mine of gold sitting right next to you, and if you just looked over there, it'd be better. But they're so stuck on that outcome that they can't get away from it, and they miss the beauty of what that journey could have taken them to. And then the third thing is the realization there's always another deal. There's always another life. There's always another opportunity. There's always another relationship. And but that's really hard when you're doing it, but that's what the future holds. And when people look to the future and they get all wrapped up in it and worried, that's where anxiety comes from. So the only truth in life is right now, the present. And if you can live fully in the present without judgment, and you can live knowing that you've done the best you could, and in the past, yeah, you went through some crap, man, but that's okay. You're better off now because of it. Doesn't mean you liked it. Doesn't mean you want to hang out with those same people again. It surely as heck doesn't mean you want to go through that process again. I hope to hell I never go through that process again. But at the same time, it's complete And when you recognize that, then you're allowed to live in the present. And I think that was the whole Jesus model. I think it was the entire Buddha model. The Buddha especially, you're gonna have to suffer, and only through suffering will you find enlightenment. And that's why Buddhists will get Jesus and say, "He either is who he says he was, or he's the most enlightened human being to ever walk on the planet. So just do what he says, 'Cause he, he got it. He figured it out." But the problem with Christianity to say is we've drifted away from the study of what Jesus was saying. If you just throw out all the other things, and they've got their place, the morality place, but if somebody wants to get into what I call Christology, the study of Jesus, it's only four books out of the 64 focus on that dude. If you just read that and you say, "What can I extrapolate from that? What words were there?" you're gonna find you don't disagree with anything, he says. And then you'll also find he didn't say a lot of stuff that the church says he said. Well- Paul might've said some stuff. Jesus didn't say that. So are you studying Paul, or are you studying Jesus? And then you look at it and you go, all Jesus ever said was to love each other. And the only two warnings he gave, and it's an interesting dialect to look at it, he said two things, and he gave a parable story where a guy comes in the middle of the night and was knocking and can't come in, and there's a storm or some bad people coming or whatever, and, and says to the house owner, "Hey, let me in. Let me in." And he says, "I don't know you." That's terrifying. 'Cause think about that at the end of your life and you're, you're doing everything wrong, you were arrogant, you didn't believe in completion, you were worried about the past, you were worried about the future, you didn't live your life to the fullest. I'm not in, I'm not, I'm not buying into this thing with a creator that I wanna go knock on the door one day and she say, ", I don't know who you are." That's terrifying. So and then the other thing, and it's another line where if you read through the text, with Jesus' inflection the way it's written, again, we weren't there, but interpreting the inflection, of the, of the early Aramaic writers, Jesus said, "Don't you dare touch a kid. Don't you dare.", and I think the translation in English in the Jamesian text was, I won't let a, a hair on their head get hurt, or if anybody touches this little child, you'll, you'll find, you'll find a bad outcome for you. So Jesus was very protective of children and women, and he also said, if you live your life to the fullest, you can stand up and you can know that, yeah, you might've made some mistakes, but do your best, man. But at the end of the day, no judgment, and love wins. And if you just look at that, you're like, "Well, that's all I need to know." That really is it. Everything else that came after that were interpretations of what wasn't said, and they're great stories, good morality, interesting concepts, a great construct. So you read it like a novel, and you're like, "This is pretty cool. This makes sense." What's the meat of the story? Darth Vader was Luke Skywalker's father. whatever. that's it right there. And, this is another thing I'll tell you and I'll, I'll shut up about this, but I get really excited about it. So, talking about Star Wars, how we get Star Wars and spirituality together, I don't know. But Lucas was a pretty smart guy, right? So in 1977, I went to see Star Wars that summer 11 times. I'll never forget this. And I just thought it was the greatest thing I'd ever seen. Well, that was number four, right? Because remember it was released out

Erik Solbakken: of- Yes. Oh, yeah. Oh, I, I am fully steeped. You already know that. Oh. You're already preaching to the converted here, buddy.

Don Barden: Oh, yeah. Yeah. So number four, A New Hope, and then number five and number six. Then they go back to number one, two, three, and then they do seven, eight, nine. Well, I rode that wave because of my age. My kids, though, who are in their 30s now, when they watched it, they watched number one, number two, number three, and then they watched A New Hope, which was my first one, number four, five, six, and then seven, eight, nine. They, because of when they were born, was able to watch it in order, like a novel. And I remember talking to them one time and I said, "Guys, this is cool. Star Wars is so great. It's a story about Luke Skywalker and, and his sister and the Force and all that." And I just. I'll never forget, they were little, and they just looked at me and went, "Dad, have you watched these movies?" And I said, "Yeah, like 100 times. This is great." And they're like, "Dad, it's not about Luke Skywalker." And I said, "What do you mean it's not about Luke Skywalker?" And they said, "No, it's about Anakin. It's about Darth Vader. It's about him as a little child growing up with hope and aspirations. He's the fallen hero. He goes to the dark side, but he comes back." It's exactly Joseph Campbell's A Hero's Journey. And so you look at that from their perspective, 'cause they read it in order. They saw the movies in order. They could see the storyline and the arc that George Lucas was trying to put together. And when I looked at it, I'm like Crap, how could I miss that? It was never about Luke Skywalker. It was about Darth Vader, about Anakin, his rise and fall, the hero's journey, how he becomes good at the end. So why don't we apply that methodology to the Bible? When people are looking at the scripts, whether it's Agito, whether it's whatever, they're looking at it, they're picking out pieces they want to read, then telling you they know what it's about. Yet if you start in the beginning and read all the way through, you'll see this most beautiful story. You'll start to see these themes repeat itself to the point where you're like, "I need to pay attention to this. I think I can be a better person if I follow this." And then the story of Jesus is very, very short, but it's the most impactful thing. It's the hinge. It's the I am your father moment, with Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker. It's buried right there. And then there's a little wrap-up. it takes a while, but yeah they ultimately wrap it up. But the storyline is beautiful. But how arrogant are we to think that that's where the story ended? There's been a lot of messiahs, man. Martin Luther King, clearly a messiah. Joan of Arc. You look at all these great people throughout history. Einstein. You look at these people and go, they impacted the world and made us better

Erik Solbakken: Wow.

Don Barden: What is this? Why do we think that, that all spirituality ended 2,000 years ago? The great gift from the Creator is that it keeps going, that love wins. Now, I do believe that that story arc is probably the most important single arc in history, but I also believe it's pretty darn arrogant to think that's the only one, And that, that the Creator never let go of us, nor will she. What she's doing is saying that, ", if you just hang in there and you look around you, you feel that breeze like we felt in Kelowna that day, you'll know that I've always got you, and everything's gonna be fine. But it's gonna be up to you. You can maximize life, and here's a few playbooks to read. You ought to look at them. And it's not all there. It's also in this song. It's in this movie. It's in this play. It's in that little kid who smiled at you. It's in that lady who, who gave you a flower one day 'cause she saw that you were sad and thought that you needed it." All of that is the God story and the Creator story. And we, we, we just close our hearts to do it because we're so domesticated. And if we let go of domestication and we say to ourselves, "I wanna be free in mind, body, and spirit. I wanna open my heart to the Creator, to the universe. And number one, radically accept that I have no idea what I'm doing. I don't know what. This is so far beyond my comprehension. But there's this little thing inside of me that says I do know what love is, real love." And if you break those shackles, you take the things off your eyes, you, you say to the Creator, "I'm willing to accept this now," oh, man, it changes radically. Doesn't mean it's all roses from here on out, but it just means that you're better able to handle it. And, I'll never forget Billy Graham, the great American preacher. They asked him before he passed away, they said, "Are you afraid of dying?" He said, "Oh, no." He said, "I'm good with being dead. The process, that bothers me a little bit. I'm not excited about the process." Right? And I thought, "That's the most honest answer I've ever heard." He wasn't afraid of the next stage. He just didn't like the process, you gotta go through. And it's the same with anything, with a divorce or anything. Nobody's gonna like the process, but when you get to the other side, you'll realize that love wins, and some things are complete. And when you accept those completions, accept those lessons, look around you and see these beautiful lessons from the Gita, from the Bible, from the Torah, from the Qurans, from all of them, you're gonna realize that we're all pretty much the same, and that goes back to Gladwell's list of 10 things. 80% of them are the same. Go there. Don't argue. Don't be decisive. Don't think that you're so arrogant that what's best in the future and in the past and in the present. Just breathe, man. And if you breathe and you love everybody, it's gonna be fine.

Erik Solbakken: And that brings this podcast to completion.

Don Barden: There

Erik Solbakken: you go. That was awesome. That's ex- Oh. that was way more than I had hoped for. I knew we were gonna get down into some really great stuff, but Don, you just articulated such an important concept of being open, exploring. You. We talked about going through the Viking warrior mindset. Dude, it's awesome.

Don Barden: Yeah.

Erik Solbakken: Thank you. Thank you so much. No, thank you. We are

Don Barden: gonna wrap this up. I'll tell you one thing, and you, you, you, my story on this. love is in the wildflowers. It's in those little things when you go out in the woods where nobody is, and you see the wildflowers, and you pick them, and you make bouquets, and you see them, and you understand creation. And then you leave those bouquets back in the forest. You don't take it with you. You, you let somebody else experience it. So I've been telling everybody, the wildflowers are where it's at, and if you can just go walk in the woods, and breathe, and be quiet, and feel that breeze, and, and know that you're the only person in all of the universe that felt what you just felt, that saw those flowers. And if you pick those flowers, make a beautiful bouquet, and leave it there, you will know what love really is. And that's that moment of self-reflection, of being in the forest with the wildflowers to really know love. And when you do that, you're never gonna let, let it go, and you're not going to let domestication come back. You're not gonna let the shackles come back, and you're gonna seek that divinity, and say to yourself, "Man, now that I'm free, help me. Help me be the best person I can be, 'cause I don't wanna blow this gift. And whatever's in the future, I don't know, but I'm pretty good right now." And so what you're doing is helping people experience that, so I'm, I'm very grateful for you, man. Keep it up.

Erik Solbakken: Awesome, brother. Thank you for being on the podcast. And everybody, if you're wanting to see a little bit more, you can go to donbarden.com, see what he's up to. You can connect with him on LinkedIn, social, or you can reach out to me, because of course him and I are on speed dial. - Yeah. dude, thank you for being on the podcast. Everybody- Oh,

Don Barden: thank you, man. I love you. You're doing great stuff, man. Thank you

Erik Solbakken: Keep exploring, everyone. Bye-bye. Thanks for listening to the Viking Academy podcast. Make sure to leave us your honest feedback by leaving a review on Apple or Spotify, and hit subscribe so you never miss an episode.